Derrida, lecteur de Marx

This paper explores Derrida\u27s readings and commentaries on Marx\u27s writings. The analysis focuses on direct quotations of Marx\u27s reflections in Derrida\u27s Specters of Marx, as well as in seminars, publications, and interviews before and after the book\u27s publication. By examining four themes — money, the market, ideology, and revolution — we will demonstrate which texts Derrida focuses on and how he interprets them. This will enable us to understand how Derrida develops his concept of spectrality, a way of thinking that transcends ontology. The novelty of my approach lies in returning jointly to the details of Derrida\u27s and Marx\u27s texts with the aim to understand Derrida\u27s interpretation of Marx (and its limits) rather than using Marx as a pretext to understand Derrida\u27s overall project

Max Scheler und Ronald De Sousa über Werte und Gefühle

The aim of this paper is to reconsider Max Scheler\u27s philosophy of values in the light of the renewed discussion of axiological issues in contemporary emotion research. In this context, connections are drawn with Ronald de Sousa, who, like Scheler, seeks to demonstrate the relationship between emotions and values. While Scheler assumes an immediate feeling of value, De Sousa conceptualizes value perception as the apprehension of value properties in analogy to sensory perception. Based on De Sousa\u27s concept of key scenarios and Scheler\u27s assumption of a historically evolved ethos, this paper further analyzes the social and cultural aspects of value perception and the possibility of an objective hierarchy of values

Déconstruction et critique sociale : Derrida lecteur d\u27Althusser

This contribution explores Derrida\u27s complex relationship with Althusser\u27s work. It seeks to show how Derrida built on certain aspects of Althusser\u27s work, particularly his internal critique of rigid forms of Marxism, while distancing himself from those more concerned with his relationship to science — specifically Althusser\u27s attempt to promote a new science of history. This discussion, which sometimes took the form of a subtle game of \u27positions\u27, initially focused on the theme of ideology. Ultimately, however, it reveals itself to be the bearer of major political issues, such as the way in which social critique should be envisaged, or the place that the motif of exploitation might still occupy in it

One of God\u27s "Bad Moods": Kafka\u27s Social Diagnosis and its Multiple Interpretations

In this editorial for the special issue on Franz Kafka, Yvanka B. Raynova examines Kafka\u27s relationship to Nietzsche as well as the very different and often contradictory interpretations of Kafka\u27s work by philosophers and literary critics. She argues that although Kafka\u27s novels cannot be directly "translated into a philosophical, theological, sociological, or psychoanalytical discourse" (Jürgen Born), they should not be interpreted and evaluated solely from a literary perspective, as they raise institutional questions that have led to socio-critical and political associations that are just as urgent for us today. In this context, she refers to the controversies surrounding Kafka\u27s work in Eastern Europe during the Cold War, to his current socio-political reception in art, and to the Kafkaesque in the contemporary world

Defending Oneself in the Absence of Goodwill: Nietzschean and Spinozist Critique in Franz Kafka

This essay aims to delineate the structure shared between Kafka’s three novels, Amerika, The Trial, and The Castle, using ideas from Spinoza and Nietzsche, with whom Kafka had familiarity since his youth, namely, Spinoza’s idea that the true essence of religion is justice and charity and Nietzsche’s idea that justice is born from magnanimity, in order to grasp Kafka’s critique of certain unnecessary realities of broadly administered justice. All three novels are structured around an institution - America, the justice system, the castle - as the characters they are composed of operate either as cogs of this institution or demonstrate some function outside of this institution, usually offering some kind of help to the protagonist. However, despite these cogs, the institution never serves its purpose in the same way that, despite these helpers, the protagonist is never helped, precisely because of a schism between the realms of justice and charity

Deconstruction et justice en langue de systemes : sur quelques lectures derridiennes d’outre-rhin

This paper explores the reception of Jacques Derrida’s work among system theoreticians, especially those who gravitate around Niklas Luhmann. Luhmann’s readings of Derrida suggest that he saw in deconstruction a contemporary evolution within the system of society. This evolution brought systemic foundation paradoxes to light in an unprecedented way. In Luhmann’s view, however, Systems Theory should precisely reflect on the possible deparadoxification of the problems presented by Derrida. We argue against the oversimplification that suggests a deconstructive penchant for paradoxes juxtaposed with a system-theoretical inclination to resolve them. The intricacies of this interplay become particularly apparent in the examination of the concept of justice. Through an exploration of Derrida and Luhmann’s writings on the subject, we assert that deconstruction does not neatly align with a formula for transcendence, as suggested by Gunther Teubner. Instead, it manifests as an aporetic state, embodying both the condition of possibility and the condition of impossibility of normative systems. &nbsp

Kafka’s Students and the Inoperation of Knowledge: An Investigation into the Power of Stupidity

This article will explore how configurations of the student in Kafka\u27s literature represent a specific relation to knowledge. The central argument will be that their attitude represents a form of rendering knowledge inoperative, therefore representing a disruption of power structures. The emblematic figure of this posture will be the worst student in Kafka\u27s Abraham. This disruptive posture will be denoted as a form of stupidity.  The interest in stupidity comes from its abundant presence as a motif in contemporary social and political issues. Stupidity is a form of otherness and belongs always to the other: the accusation of stupidity is always directed at the alternative position. The text will use the student in Abraham to challenge the common-sense framing of stupidity as constituting an unwarranted invasion, deemed inconsistent with the age of enlightenment and political progress, and that must therefore be eradicated

Simone Weil and the need for obedience: political, religious, and ethical dimensions

This essay explores the development of Simone Weil\u27s conception of obedience across religious, political, and ethical contexts. By bringing together these strands of Weil\u27s thought, it aims to illuminate some important connections in her treatment of obedience throughout these diverse topics. The author argues that Weil\u27s political treatment of obedience is deeply influenced by ideas in Christian thought, and that this account is situated within an understanding of obedience in the natural world which is itself ethically loaded. Hence it is suggested that Weil\u27s account of obedience has something to offer philosophy today: namely, a conception of obedience which recognises the practical and ethical need for obeying others, but which is distinct from the mere submission to power

Simone Weil et les dimensions mystiques de la nourriture

This article aims to examine the mystical meanings of food in the texts Gravity and Grace, Waiting for God, and First and Last Notebooks by the French philosopher Simone Weil (1909-1943). The main questions posed over the course of this study are as follows: How does Weil interpret food in her mystical texts? What relationship do her ideas have with her context of the Second World War, with Judaism, with her body? Are biomedical understandings of behavior, such as anorexia nervosa, applicable to Weil? The methodology will involve an in-depth reading of the three texts mentioned above, sketching the key theories of decreation and affliction. The main thesis of the paper is that food has an irremediably ambiguous status in Weil, marking both the degrading subjection of the human being to the earthly laws of necessity and gravity, and paradoxically, a path to salvation, where, through the spiritual transformation of decreation, the human being eats and is eaten by God. The author argues that this quasi-Christian mysticism must first be understood in Weil’s context of the Second World War, and that it also involves a problematic relationship with Judaism. Moreover, this study contends that interpretations utilizing primarily medical frameworks to understand Weil\u27s food deprivation, such as anorexia nervosa, are insufficient. Such pathologization, as will be demonstrated, neglects the complex and often ambiguous mystical, ethical, and ontological meanings that Weil locates in hunger.

Primal Screams: The Infantile Cry in Simone Weil

The main thesis of this essay is that non-linguistic infantile cries towards the nondefinable constitute, for Simone Weil, the essence of the human. The author begins by surveying, for the first time, Weil’s depiction of the infant’s cry as a scream of an infinite desire towards nothing definite. In the second part, in which the author analyzes the infantile cry introduced in Weil’s later writings this desire, it will be presented as fundamental to being. The infantile cry expresses mutely a desire for the indescribable good. Since it is cried from birth till death, its designation as infantile is revealed to indicate not one’s age but one’s nonlinguistic essence. While recent scholarship emphasized the importance of silence in Weil’s thought, no attention had been given to the significance of the ineffable to her philosophy. By studying the infant and infantile cry, this essay will show how the inarticulate desire towards the unattainable comprises the truth of being